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Nobody in the room had asked the witness anything for eleven seconds, and Yolanda Merrick’s hands were still on the keys.

Yolanda Merrick is the most requested court reporter in the Sixteenth Circuit and has never had a page successfully challenged in thirty-one years. On a wet February afternoon she writes down a full sentence that nobody asked a question for. When counsel asks for a readback she leaves the line out, deliberately, in front of four lawyers, and hears herself do it.

It has happened ten times in nine years, in four counties, always in her hand, and nine of those ten people are dead.